His our Story was A curious as his Narritive

arundhati roy + Frieire + John Cusak + Detroit = Love

Who knew this would be a combination to love.That together this makes of a person that only through these 4 words can explain what I am experiencing. I am scared as fuck. But A.N.B.I.T.J seems to fit most things in my life. Who knew a homeless person who bestow the anthem of 2009! I didnt have a clue this was transpire now I have to put myself to hire because this bitch aint in dire need of a cure for this disease of life that penetrates the minds of the weak because we forgot how to speak and all that is left is our minds broke down by this imperial design.

With love,

Aaron

That first scene in the book Invisible Man is rough. I can’t get over how these kids are shown a naked white woman that increase the rage within them when she is taken away. After she esacape for the mysoginy of the white crowd of men, the young black men are blindfolded as a frenzy of drunk’n, cigar smoken, southern white men beat the living shit out of them. The two left standing proceed to fight a normal boxing match. Yet, all he is concerned with is trying please the white men who are watching.

This kills men.

Please tell us about books or authors that have been particularly meaningful to you.

There are two books that created a space within my mind to understand why I felt dispossessed or alone. The first was Youth in Revolt by C.D. Payne and the other is James Baldwin’s Going to Meet the Man.

Youth In Revolt is my generations Catcher in the Rye. Its a story of self-discovery in a world that become more complex as time goes on. It addresses adolescence, puberty, sex, love, adventure and everything I was going through as a 16 year old in Houston, Texas. To be honest, becoming a young adult is a very difficult and perplexing experience. Waking up with feelings, emotions and physical changes that society doesn’t talk about, makes books like Youth In Revolt necessary. And like most 16 year olds, I thought my experiences were only happening to me and no one else. I had no real outlet for any of the feelings I was going through, until Youth In Revolt gave me my first really glimpse into another mind that was going through similar struggles.

As I grew older, my awkwardness in my adolescence was replaced by a lack of purpose as an adult. It felt as though I was surround by people who just didn’t understand who I was as a person.  Yet, I wasn’t alone and Going to Meet the Man is a testament to this.  I found comfort in James Baldwin’s collection of short stories as he detailed human emotion in a society that is constantly forcing conformity. One story that is still draws emotion from me, is the story of an sheriff, who is trying to keep the status quo alive, while living through a contradiction in his own life. Deep down, away from the badge and wife, he is broken by the images he witnessed as a child. So while he is beating a black man for trying to sit-in at a local dinner, the sheriff is brought back to the memories of his childhood.

This story evokes  a lot of emotion in me. What it does is create a space to understand that social norms do change and what we think is true today is up for disprovable tomorrow. When I felt frustrated about certain parts of my life, I realize that life is always changing and I have to be in a position to create the change as it comes. James Baldwin has opened my mind to the effects of change as it takes place everyday.

Please describe yourself as a reader and how you came to be one

Books saved my life! I am not sure how many people can say that, but books were my way out.  Books gave me a space to dream outside of the realities of city life. How I became a reader is very much linked to how my parents became readers, their parents, my grandparents-parents and so-on. Reading was never a luxury, it was a tool for self-preservation.

When slavery ended, my family was free but didnt have a dime to exercise their freedom. Land, food, and shelter came at a cost and unfortunately they couldn’t afford a thing. Like many former slaves, we became sharecroppers working the same fields we had just been liberated from. The future looked as if we were going to endure the same fate as before but reconstruction created a school two miles down the road. It is  difficult to explain what literacy meant to my family, but simply it gave us the ability to dream for a better future. To see past the world that was in front of us through the writings of others.

Now that thousands of children and adults were reading, the existence of sharecroppers and agriculturist changed. We started to see ourselves as subjects able to have agency in the world and this is exemplified by our development as a people after slavery. Reading allowed Black people to dream of a world that wasn’t plagued by Jim Crow and reading enabled my parents to see a world outside of the 1967 riots that hit Detroit, Michigan. It allowed them to capitalize on opportunities to leave Detroit. I was born in Houston, Texas and like them, I read to get myself out of harms way. Instead of participating in drugs, gangbanging, and social ills, I read.

I was ten years old and concerned as to why I wasn’t creating a better world. A few months before I turned eleven my father reached into the bookshelf and gave my first non-picture book, Stinger by Robert McCammon. It was a  story about a border town that is forced to work together as an alien murders the town’s inhabitants. It’s about struggle, love, and hope. Stinger allowed me to connect my ambitions of change with the struggles of this fictitious universe. Not only did I enjoy it, I became enthused with more and more stories of strife. My style as a reader allows me to alleviate the struggles of today with a sense of hope for tomorrow. Reading is the most important part of my life.

DA Pledge!!

I am not really down with pledges but we really need something to be proud of right now. We need an anthem!!!

Foreign Exchange

It must feel real good to own a business. You come in when you feel like it, you can play with real work knowing that your creating change that will inflate your pocketbook. You wear clothes of a person without no real care in the work place. From head to toe your dress in your favoriate work wear which dignifies yourself, while letting the customer know that the owner of this store dresses just like you!

Shit!!!!! haha, I mean you come in half time or no time at all doing the work that noone wants to do. You take pride in moving boxes because noone else will move them. Or, just to tease people you will get behind the cash register thanking every single person for their money. Yet, your workers dont do the same. Is generosity fabricated because you can feel the end results of every dollar you make? Or that  the 1.75 cup of coffee really cost 40cents to produce? I am not sure but every owner I see in the work setting is so so so stoked to be there. I hope I am one someday!!!

Intenesity

The more I think about my actions, I realize the present, or moment, is an unique event.  When its over it becomes the past and I wonder if analyzing the moment, or past, makes me a  historian. If i am a historian then the only tool at my disposal is a speculation of what took place before, during, and after the moment. Of course there are previous historical conditions that shape the present. But can a historian really revealed the reasons for an outcome?

Personally,  my actions have a history behind them but I am not fully aware of them in the present. Actions are much like habits,  you can tell people that your habit is rooted in a history but when the habit happens all you have is the action without any preemption.   If the habit is bad, how a person breaks the habit can shed light onto  breaking the habit of the present. I hope this makes sense. I am trying to connect the actions of the present to a habit which is rooted in a historical context that is oblivious during the habit. Yet, how one breaks a habit is central to breaking the “so called” linearness of the present.

I am shaped by a historical context that is endless. So, I need to identify and isolate parts of myself that needs to be changed.  Its also important to understand the linkages of each problem within myself as many of them do not rest in isolation from the rest. A problem that I have is how closed I am with my feelings. The historical context  is rooted in self esteem, rejection, love, fear, and the list goes on. But if we identify how my lack of feelings creates a habit then we can at least address a portion of the problem.

People tell him how judgemental I am. I am going to take this as a given and I will try to understand why I am judgemental. When I pass  judgement, it is to cover something inside of myself that I do not want to show. I am not sure what I am covering up but the process looks like this. I see a person that is connected to what I am hiding. Instead of being open to them with whats inside, I look down on them for assumptions I have built about people. So, a piece of designer clothing will cause me to close up. First, If i am pushing people away then I am worried about distance between that person and I. Distance means that you want to control the space that is unfolding at the time. Which brings up another problem dealing with control and the lack of it. Control is part of a larger picture which everyone seeks but it usually manifest its self in a form of  power. My lack of control causes me to use my power in the form of judgment. Judgment is tied to the current practice of social interaction. Its a tool of eliminating spatial realities between people by delegitimizing a persons existence. “Surely, you could have not understood this business model, so i need to take ownership over your Idea because you are not legit” Or with  judgment is used to overcome the unknown. Like I dont really know this person but I am going to judge them by what I speculate them to be.  Doing this, myself,  I realize I alienate myself from people and force isolation onto myself. I secretly hate this but, in the moment, my fear, lack of control, low self esteem and other factors come to the surface as I try to control and distance myself from others. This is a difficult complexity  to understand, but I wonder what I am trying to hide.

We will see how this plays out.

Aaron